


The Theodorakis Guide to the Heirs of North America

by galaxysoup



Category: Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Gen, Post-Book(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which life happens, as life is prone to doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Theodorakis Guide to the Heirs of North America

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadelennox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadelennox/gifts).



> For [jadelennox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jadelennox/pseuds/jadelennox), who requested Chris. Chris was always one of my favorite characters, so I was happy to oblige! I’m sorry I didn’t manage to get a puzzle or caper in there. I tried to plot one, but it never materialised in a way I found satisfactory. Hopefully this is still enjoyable!

Chris keeps scrapbooks. He has one for each of the heirs. Some are thicker than others - Judge Ford’s and Turtle’s and Doug’s in particular, although Theo’s isn’t exactly small either.

He started it because he liked being able to keep track of everybody, and also because he likes organizing things. Cutting articles out with scissors is pretty fun too, and he enjoys being able to look through his books later. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly whimsical, he thinks of the collection as an heir taxonomy.

When they meet him, people often think that Chris enjoys birdwatching because the freedom of birds in flight stands in stark contrast to his own physical limitations. That’s not true. Birds in flight are extraordinary, of course, miracles of biology and engineering, but what Chris loves is _ornithology_. He likes the science of it - the methodology and the intricate web of genetics and relationships that encompasses birds in general.

Well. And birds are gorgeous when they fly. That's pretty neat too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chris likes Mrs. Baumbach. She can be a little cloying to be around sometimes, but she’s a genuinely sweet person so Chris doesn’t mind too much.

They meet for coffee sometimes when Chris comes to visit Theo and Turtle. Mrs. Baumbach mostly talks about Turtle and Alice. Chris listens a lot. He’s a good listener, and he thinks that sometimes Mrs. Baumbach needs to talk to somebody who isn’t six years old or rushing off to oversee a hostile takeover. He likes to listen to her, anyway. She’s more perceptive than people give her credit for, and she really loves the people she cares about. It’s nice to hear.

Sometimes he’ll tell her about his students at the university. She’s a good listener, too. She can’t keep any of the technical terms straight, but then Chris has no idea what a gusset is, so it evens out.

One Christmas she makes him a really lovely wool jacket with a subtle feather pattern to it. Chris learns to knit just so he can make her a scarf in return.

It’s a really terrible scarf, but she wears it for the rest of her life. It makes Chris feel immeasurably grateful.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At first Chris writes Judge Ford letters because it feels like something he should do for the woman who’s financing his education – and, okay, a little bit because the novelty of having hands steady enough for good penmanship won’t wear off for years. There’s also the bond of having gone through the game together, even if they hadn’t been partners.

She doesn’t write back much, and Chris keeps at it mostly because he likes doing it. After a while he starts getting postcards and quick notes back. He’s never asked, but he’s always guessed that it just took her a little while to realise that she didn’t need to answer all his letters with responses just as long-winded.

He really likes getting things from her. She writes formally and concisely, but after he’s read enough of them he starts to get a feel for her style and realises, with a gleeful kind of shock, that Judge Ford actually has quite a sense of humor. It’s so dry that it’s hard to see unless you know what to look for, but it’s definitely there.

It makes reading her rulings a lot more fun, for one thing. Her press release when she’s named to the Supreme Court has him in stitches and makes Theo think he’s lost his mind.

He mentions it in his next letter. Judge Ford sends him a typewritten statement on her official stationery that says she has no idea what he’s talking about.

Chris has it framed. _Hilarious._

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chris meets Shirley at college, at a party. Chris is in the corner of the room because it’s crowded and he doesn’t like having so many people loom over him. Shirley’s in the corner because she’d only come as a favor to her roommate, who’d been too nervous to go alone, and she’s just waiting for the right moment to slip out and go home.

Chris is trying to figure out a way to start a conversation with Shirley, because she’s pretty and she doesn’t seem to be having much fun, when he notices the tiny pin she has on her shirt collar.

“Wow,” he blurts, “Is that a _Charadrius wilsonia?”_

Shirley blinks and says, “Juvenile _Charadrius vociferus_ , actually. I’m impressed you recognized it.”

By the time Shirley’s roommate is tired enough to go home, Chris and Shirley have been talking for two and a half hours and Chris has promised to loan her his copy of Peterson’s _Birds Over America_ if she’ll give him an hour in the field with her Leica Trinovid binoculars.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Theo mentions once that he’s surprised their parents weren’t made part of the game. It’s never surprised Chris. Their dad had been Violet Westing’s beau before she’d died and that’s what had gotten Chris and Theo in, but at its heart the game had always been about giving people what they needed.

Theo would probably say that what their parents had needed was for someone to help Chris. Chris likes to think that their parents hadn’t needed help. He likes to think that bringing Chris and Theo in had helped Mr. Westing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Turtle comes to visit him at college when he’s finishing up his senior year. That’s pretty weird, on its own – all the heirs keep tabs on each other, to one extent or another, but Turtle’s always been the sort to rely on briefings from her sister rather than to go out and chase people down on her own. Honestly, Chris had been a little surprised she’d shown up for the five-year reunion at all. She’s so busy!

She sits in the kitchenette of the apartment Chris has with Shirley (a grown up apartment! Of his very own! It had been very exciting) and makes awkward small talk, clutching a giant travel mug of coffee that she’d brought with her. Chris learns more about the stock market in ten minutes than he’s ever known in his life, and listens with a kind of awe as Turtle talks at a rate that suggests she’s already emptied and refilled the mug a few times.

Finally she chugs the last of the coffee, slams the travel mug down on the counter like she’s just downed a shot, and says “So. Your brother.”

Chris puts together the unusual visit, the intense way Turtle’s staring at him, and a few offhand comments his brother made at the reunion, and gapes at her. “Are you... here to ask my permission to date him?”

Turtle scowls. “Well, I barely know your parents,” she snaps.

It does make sense. Turtle’s fond of her father and has come to an understanding with her mother, but she’s always valued her relationship with Angela most. In Turtle’s mind Chris is definitely the one with the biggest stake in Theo’s personal life.

He steeples his hands under his chin and gives her a narrow-eyed look. Turtle faces him down with the steely determination that he remembers from the mock-trial at Mr. Westing’s final will-reading.

“I expect you to treat him well,” he says finally. “If you decide to make the relationship more serious at a later date, you will negotiate financial terms with me. And if you hurt him I’ll sic my trained fleet of _Carduelis psaltria_ on you.”

Turtle copies his pose. “Acceptable,” she says after a moment of deliberation. “I do like goldfinches.”

Chris grins at her. What fun! He’s totally going to ask Judge Ford to draw him up something legal-sounding for Turtle to sign, just so he can use it later in his best man’s speech.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chris adores Theo’s first book. In fact, he’s probably responsible for at least a third of the sales for it because any time someone asks him what he’s reading he gives his copy away and then has to buy a new one.

He’s glad that Theo has writing and Turtle and his own life, he really is. Theo’s always needed that. Even when they were teenagers, Chris felt bad about how much time Theo had to spend on him so their parents would be able to run the coffee shop and take care of the million other details that come with having a family and a business and a life. 

Sometimes, though, he wakes up in the middle of the night and reads Theo’s book to himself and pretends, just for a moment, that Theo’s in the next bed over telling him stories. Shirley’s amazing and he loves her like crazy, but sometimes he does miss the times that he and Theo just got to be brothers together.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ms. Pulaski - sorry, Mrs. Schultz - has always amused Chris. Theo regards her visits with a sort of grimly buried horror, but Chris kind of looks forward to them. Mrs. Schultz is too loud, too upfront, too aggressive, too self-centered. She lives to bull her way past boundaries, and Chris admires that about her.

They’ve never had all that much to do with each other directly. There was the game, and the time they’d had that wonderful lunch together and the time Chris had tried his best to convince her to show him her short-hand notes, but these days Chris is mostly a satellite member of Angela’s extended family who only runs across her occasionally.

Still, he remembers her well. Because of his disease and because of being the youngest, the people around him often want to protect him. When he first decides to go to Central America to study ornithology and everyone from Theo to the Dean of Students refuses him outright, he remembers Mrs. Schultz’s bombastic style and Judge Ford’s steely gravitas and puts his metaphorical foot down. 

It doesn’t come naturally to him, but it works. Mrs. Schultz is probably very surprised to get a thank-you postcard from him when he finally makes it to Belize.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sometimes Chris wonders about how much Mr. Westing really had figured out. Everyone had been paired with a partner who could help them, but how could Mr. Westing really have known how well it would work? Chris got a partner who could help him medically, and okay, that one was probably easy to figure out. So were Crow and Otis Amber, if Mr. Westing was keeping as close an eye on his wife as it seemed.

But how could he have known that Theo needed a partner who would let him stand alone, away from his family? How could he have known that Mrs. Wexler would wind up taking over Mr. Hoo’s business? He couldn’t possibly have known that Angela and Ms. Pulaski – sorry, Mrs. Schultz, now – would be so good for each other. Ms. Pulaski had been a mistake, after all.

Sometimes Chris wonders about Sybil Pulaski, the woman who was supposed to be involved in the game and had been accidentally replaced with Sydelle Pulaski instead. Did anyone ever tell her what she’d missed? Had Mr. Westing’s estate ever given her the inheritance she was supposed to have?

Turtle would probably know, if Chris asked her. Chris likes Turtle, and she’s good for Theo, but she’s a little intimidating. He doesn’t ask.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chris doesn’t have nightmares often, and when he does they’re usually the same amorphic, jumbled mess that most people’s are.

Every once in a while, though, he dreams about the game, and how it could have gone if there had actually been a murderer amongst them instead of just a mess of Westing family guilt and old resentments.

It usually starts with the day in the coffee shop when the bomb had gone off and Mom had been spattered with tomato sauce, only this time it actually is blood. One by one the heirs fall, and Chris knows that if he can solve the puzzle fast enough everyone else will be fine and the dead will come back to life just like Mr. Westing did. But he can’t do it, can’t think fast enough or move fast enough or scream loud enough, and he watches as Dad and then Judge Ford and Turtle and Angela and Mrs. Baumbach and everyone else disappears until only he and Theo are left, and Theo tells him to stay put because he’s going to go find the murderer and protect Chris and Chris _knows_ that as soon as Theo leaves -

But those are rare. He doesn’t have them often, and it’s a lot better once he’s able to wake up to Shirley’s presence in bed next to him.

He’s never asked Theo if he has the nightmares too. He’s pretty sure Theo’s would be different, and in any case Theo would just worry if Chris brought it up.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“So, wait, it was all fake?” Shirley asks. They’re sitting in the common room of Chris’s dorm, drinking out of coffee cups that definitely don’t contain terrible boxed wine because they're underage and that would be wrong.

“Well, sort of,” Chris hedges. He’s never tried explaining the game to someone who wasn’t involved in it, and it’s proving to be a lot harder than he’d expected it to be. “Mr. Westing wasn’t actually dead until later, but the game was real.”

“Wow.” Shirley drains her cup and stares down into it thoughtfully. “ _Wow._ That’s both messed up and kind of cool. I have to say, it also explains a lot.”

Chris blinks. “Really?”

Shirley laughs. “Chris, most college students aren’t friends with judges and, and restaurateurs and a consultant to the governor’s inquiry panel for state lottery and an _Olympic athlete_ , for crying out loud.”

“I guess not,” Chris says. He’s never really thought about it that much - plenty of people are friends with their neighbors - but he guesses they do act like a little more than just neighbors. His first month of college Mrs. Wexler had sent him takeout and a bundle of menus to distribute around the dorms, and his Intro to Government professor had dropped an entire stack of exams when he found out _the_ Judge Ford had agreed to be interviewed for Chris’s final paper.

Really, though, they aren’t that much different from normal people. The game had just given them a chance to… _expand_ a little bit.

Sometimes Chris does think about where they would be without the game. Theo wouldn’t be in journalism school - he would still be tied to their family, his responsibilities. Their parents definitely wouldn’t have been able to retire to Florida. They would still be in the tiny apartment above the coffee shop in the old neighborhood, where the roof leaked and the landlord kept changing the rent and his mother got that pinched, worried look on her face every time a new hospital bill arrived.

“Chris?”

Chris refocuses. “Sorry, what?”

Shirley eyes him worriedly. “You were a million miles away there for a minute.”

Chris forces a smile. “I was just thinking about where we’d be if it wasn’t for Mr. Westing and the game. I guess it does seem a little messed up from the outside, and it kind of was to go through it, but it helped us all a lot.”

Shirley’s expression softens. “Okay. That’s the important part, then.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Theo and Turtle never say anything outright, but it isn’t hard for Chris to figure out that they aren’t having kids because they’re afraid of passing on Chris’s disease.

On the one hand, Chris can understand this. Theo had to watch as his baby brother went from an ordinary kid to a wheelchair-bound teenager who couldn’t control his own body, and that must have been incredibly scary. Chris can still see it sometimes, in the way Theo automatically goes to help Chris with stuff and then stops himself, and the way he checks in almost compulsively and makes sure Chris is okay. His caring nature is one of the things Chris loves most about his brother, but he’s not above admitting that it can be a little stifling sometimes.

On the other hand, Theo and Turtle’s decision is a little insulting. Chris’s life isn’t ruined, not by a long shot. He’s still in a wheelchair, but the new medication they’ve discovered works like a miracle. He goes on ornithology expeditions to the jungle, for crying out loud.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chris doesn’t really talk to Dr. Deere much. Not casually, anyway. For all that he’s a pretty observant guy, Chris has always had trouble getting a read on the doctor. He sees him for check-ups occasionally, more as a courtesy and for old times’ sake than out of medical necessity, and generally uses the opportunity to snoop around Dr. Deere’s office and try to figure out how he’s doing. It’s not like Dr. Deere ever comes out and says anything personal on his own, and Chris feels like there should at least be _somebody_ checking up on him.

It’s a little surprising, therefore, when Dr. Deere finishes their usual conversation, clears his throat uncomfortably, and says “Chris, I’ve always thought you had a good head on your shoulders. Do you mind if I run something by you?”

Chris suppresses a thrill. “Of course,” he says in his gravest most grown-up voice.

Dr. Deere clears his throat again. Chris wonders if it’s post-nasal drip, allergies, or just nerves. “You talk to Angela sometimes, right? Do you think she’d... what I mean is, if I asked... do you know if she’s seeing anyone?”

Chris does in fact know (she isn’t), but he also knows better than to get in the middle of this one. “You’ll have to ask her,” he says gently.

“Right.” Dr. Deere looks embarrassed. “Of course, you’re right.”

“Look,” Chris says, relenting a little. He does like Dr. Deere. “Make sure you negotiate with Turtle first.”

Dr. Deere looks a little spooked. “Does she still kick?”

“Is that important?” Chris says innocently. Younger siblings have to stick together, and anyway, Turtle has never kicked _him_.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It’s not that he has a phobia. He just doesn’t like hospitals very much.

Shirley’s in for an appendectomy and Chris is very patiently and very calmly waiting for her to get out of surgery. He’s worried for her but he’s not _worried_ -worried - they caught the appendicitis early and Dr. Deere assured Chris that her surgeon is very good, so there really is nothing to worry about.

He can’t help it, though. Most of his memories of hospitals involve doctors frowning and his mother stepping out into the hallway to cry so he won’t see it. Hospitals mean Dad passing the night hunched over in the chair by the bed so that he can spend time with Chris and run the coffee shop at the same time. They mean Theo telling him stories until his voice cracks and selling his bicycle to buy Chris a pair of binoculars so he can at least look out the window by himself.

Even now, when it’s been years since he’s had a bad hospital visit and he only has to come once a year for routine check-ups, he can’t help but feel he’s always braced for a blow. Every doctor, every nurse who walks his way might be the bearer of bad news.

He wants to call Theo. He wants his _mom_. He doesn’t want to worry them, though, so he calls Judge Ford instead.

He gets her assistant and is fully prepared to leave a message, but as soon as he hears Chris’s name the assistant says “Oh, yes - Judge Ford says you’re always to be patched through,” and transfers him.

“Hello, Chris,” the Judge says a moment later. “How are you today?”

Her speech is always so formal. Chris finds it comforting.

They spend a few minutes chatting - Chris is working on an article for publication in the _Journal of Field Ornithology_ , Judge Ford is presiding over an affirmative action case from California, and it never matters how old Chris is because he's always surprised to have conversations like they're both _adults_ \- and then there’s a lull in the conversation. Chris finds himself blurting out “Have you ever spent much time in hospitals?”

“No, I haven’t,” Judge Ford says. She doesn’t hesitate, her tone doesn’t become sympathetic or pitying. She just responds to the question.

“I don’t like them,” Chris mumbles.

Judge Ford makes a ‘hmm’ noise. “I hate chess,” she says evenly.

Chris blinks. It seems like a non sequitur, but Judge Ford doesn’t do non-sequiturs. She once made a prosecutor cry for wasting her time with rambling. (The trial had been televised. Chris has it on tape.)

“I learned to play from Sam Westing,” she continues. “Every time I lost, which was always, he would berate me for my mistakes and insult my intelligence. I hated it, but I couldn’t talk back or refuse to play. In those days that kind of behavior would have gotten my mother fired and no one else would have hired her afterwards. Just the fact that he showed interest in me and my education was unusual.”

“I didn’t know that,” Chris says.

“It’s not something I talk about,” Judge Ford says. Her voice is still calm and cool. They could be discussing Doug’s track career instead of the things that scare them. “There’s nothing wrong with hating something, Chris, as long as your actions are still exemplary.”

Chris takes a long breath. He is still at the hospital, even though it frightens him. He’s not sure if that’s exemplary or just being a decent person. It doesn’t seem like the two should be comparable, really.

It’s probably good advice, though. Judge Ford’s advice always is. “Thank you. For taking the time to talk to me.”

“Always, Chris,” Judge Ford says, and there’s a touch of warmth in her voice. Chris smiles.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It's a weird thing, being heirs together. Chris likes it, though. 


End file.
